It’s the last Saturday Night game of the regular season and the Maple Leafs have the fitting opponent of the Montreal Canadiens. The game has some meaning for the Maple Leafs as they still want to pick up a couple of wins in their remaining four games and clinch the top spot in the Atlantic, and there would be some pleasure in making life a little more miserable for the Canadiens, but Montreal is coming in with the potential to clinch a playoff spot and is riding high on a six game winning streak. There is the potential for tonight to be a tough out for the Maple Leafs and while highly unlikely, there is still an outside chance that this could be a potential first round playoff matchup.

With a strong goaltending tandem it seems like there is some potential for there to be some debate over who will be the Game One starter for the Maple Leafs. In reality, that’s not the case. When looking at the potential opponents for the Maple Leafs in the first round it has been very clear throughout the year that when the Leafs have faced their top divisional opponents the goaltender that Craig Berube turns to is Anthony Stolarz. Both goaltenders have been equally good or bad in the recent starts and throughout May, but experience and better numbers over the course of the full season support the easy decision to go with Stolarz.

The reality is that Game One is the only game that seems close to a certainty. A win and you stay in or night with a .930 save percentage or only giving up two goals or less doesn’t make a goaltender a lock to stay in when neither goaltender is a workhorse and the 32 games played by Stolarz and 40 played by Woll represent regular season career highs for both of them at the NHL level.

Both goaltenders will see work and likely in every round the Leafs find themselves in. Stolarz and Woll might not be Ullmark and Swayman, but mirroring their playoff platooning approach is highly likely, even if a hotter hand emerges.

With David Kampf and Jake McCabe in the process of healing the Leafs are faced with a less of a hurdle when it comes to load management in the final week and more of a brick wall. This shouldn’t completely halt the idea and when they are ready to return, hopefully it takes a form other than swapping them in for Pontus Holmberg and Philippe Myers.

No, load management needs to take on a more practical form and it could be as simple as the following

There’s an additional benefit in getting players like Benoit, Myers, Robertson, Domi, etc. to playing more as in the land of unlimited overtimes, it wouldn’t hurt to even get the depth guys comfortable with 20 minute nights in do or die situations.

McCabe potentially not being 100% heading into the playoffs and Matthews being hurt late against Tampa when blocking a shot is an important reminder about risk mitigation and considering that the Leafs spent much of the first round last spring without William Nylander it wouldn’t be the worst thing to put health ahead of wins in the last week. Given that any of the Leafs first and second round opponents will be almost equally difficult, caution makes sense even if it comes at the cost of first in the Atlantic.

As the playoffs approach the last thing that should be on our minds is free agency. Quite simply it doesn’t matter at this point in time and no one is going to know exactly how they feel about the Leafs pending unrestricted free agents until after the playoffs are done anyway.

That said, when it comes to someone like Mitch Marner the Leafs have an interesting advantage in holding his 8th year and Brad Treliving would be wise to use it. While other teams could offer Marner seven years at $14M totaling an impressive $98M deal, the Leafs can put a 8 year, $13M AAV deal on the table that would give him $104M over the longer term. That $6M difference not only represents a nice little safety net when Marner is 36 and might not still be capable of receiving that deal in free agency at that point but gives him the prestige of being on a $100M contract, a rare thing over hockey’s history.

Alternatively, the eighth year is something that the Leafs can sell off as a part of a sign and trade. If a team wants to offer eight years to Marner, they could incentivize the Leafs to help them out via a sign and trade. The Oilers attempted to get the Leafs to help them out in this regard with Zach Hyman a few years back but seemed to be relying more on the goodness of Kyle Dubas’s heart rather than offering him anything meaningful to help the Oilers get their desired player at their desired contract. The pie needs to be sweetened when it comes to a year of Marner and the Leafs bowing out of the race for him, the pie would have to be sweetened a lot.

All of this is null and void if Marner is intending to mirror Auston Matthews’ approach of betting on himself and the direction of the salary cap, but if seven or eight years is the intention here, this should result in a friendly cap hit or at least some kind of return on the elite winger.

And now it is time to put a pin in that thought until hopefully June.